The present invention relates to a data transfer system, and more particularly to a data transfer system for quickly and reliably transferring necessary data to a handheld terminal device used at any location.
Recently message reception devices (pager) for radio call services are rapidly prevailing because these devices are relatively compact and low in cost. Exchange of electronic mails, data files, and the like via BBS (Bulletin Board System) is popular among personal computer communications, over Internet, and among other communications. Under such circumstances, services ("Electronic Mail Reception Notice Services" by NIFTY-Serve or NTT DoCoMo) are provided for promoting quick information exchange by automatically notifying the reception of electronic mail to a pager possessed by a user when mail to the user has been received at a BBS the user subscribes to.
The "Electronic Mail Reception Notice Services" notify the pager user only of the reception of electronic mail. Therefore, although the user can be notified of the reception of electronic mail, the contents of the mail cannot be known. Even if the user is informed earlier of the reception of electronic mail from the page the contents of the electronic mail cannot be known until the user connects to the host station of BBS and reads the contents of the electronic mail by using a personal computer at an office or home. Therefore, depending upon the circumstances when a user is informed of the reception of electronic mail, quick information exchange is not necessarily ensured.
Apart from pagers, facsimiles (hereinafter abbreviated as "FAX") are known as an apparatus for quickly and reliably transferring information, in the form of image data such as characters and graphics drawn on a sheet of paper, to remote sites by using public lines such as telephone lines. Generally, FAX is used for transferring image data to a fixed site. If a callee is out of his/her office and at a different location, FAX installed nearest to the callee is checked in accordance with the schedule of the callee, and the image data is sent to that FAX. In this case, if the callee moves to a place different from the initial schedule, the image data cannot be sent directly to the callee.
In order to deal with such circumstances, two types of FAXes "Bishamon HF-TM1!" and "Bishamon HFTB1!" manufactured and sold by the present assignee are provided with a memory reception function and a transfer function. When the two types of FAXes receive image data from another FAX, they store it in an internal memory instead of printing it out on a paper sheet, and thereafter notify the callee of the reception of the image data by calling "pager" always carried by a callee of the FAXes. When the callee is informed of the reception of the image data by the pager, the callee uses another FAX installed nearby to connect to his/her own FAX, to remote-control it through the tone dial, and to have the image data stored in the internal memory sent to the callee via the nearby FAX. In this manner, the contents of the received image data can be known quickly, and the caller who sent information over a FAX does not necessarily have to pay attention to the schedule and present location of the callee.
However, even with these two types of FAXes, the contents of image data cannot be known quickly unless there is a FAX near the callee who is informed of the reception of the image data by a pager. Furthermore, since the contents notified by the pager regard only the reception of image data, it is impossible to judge beforehand whether the contents of the image data should be read at once because they are important. Assuming that a callee is waiting for information regarding a very important issue and there is a call from the pager, the callee intercepts its work and finds a nearby FAX to perform an image data transfer operation described above, even if the contents of the image data are information regarding an issue not so important.
Low power consumption of a handheld or portable phone in combination with a pager is disclosed in JP-A-6-6302 and JP-A-6-97877.